We evaluate a tax-exemption program the Indian government initiated in 1994 to promote manufacturing in 123 industrially backward districts. The way the backward districts were identified enables us to employ a regression discontinuity design to evaluate the impacts of the program. We find that the program has led to a significant increase in firm entry and employment, particularly among the light manufacturing industries, in the better-off backward districts. Meanwhile, the program also resulted in significant displacement effects on districts which were neighboring these backward districts and relatively weak in economic activity. The findings emphasize that the spatial effects of place-based policies deserve greater attention from policy makers.

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

報告

Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University, former ADB chief economist)

"Re-examining the Effects of US-China Trade on US Jobs: A Supply Chain Perspective. "

Abstract

日時

June 8, 2018 (Friday)16:50-18:30※日時に注意

場所

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）1階 第1セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

報告

Hyeok Jeong (Soul National University)

Finance, Growth, and Inequality: New Evidence from the Panel VAR Perspective (joint with Soyoung Kim) [paper]

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationship among financial development, economic growth, and income inequality using cross-country panel VAR models. Most theoretical models state that these variables interact with one another and generate feedback dynamics. Under the presence of such interactive dynamics, single-equation regression analysis cannot capture the genuine relationship among finance, growth, and inequality. We use the panel VAR models to reflect these interactive feedback dynamics. Our estimation results suggest that the real GDP per capita decreases in response to financial deepening shock in private credit or liquid liability but increases to stock market capitalization shock. The effects of financial deepening on inequality are only weakly positive and short-lived. Positive income shock tends to increase inequality but this effect is not robust to financial deepening measures. However, inequality is harmful for growth controlling for every financial deepening measure.

日時

GRIPS-TWID Development Workshop with Rohini Pande In cooperation with JICA

Understanding how patient responds to price is a key to the optimal design of health insurance. However, past studies are predominantly concentrated on the adults and elderly, and surprisingly little is known about children. We examine the effect of patient cost-sharing on health care utilization among children by exploiting newly collected data on drastic subsidy expansion in Japan, with more than 5,000 changes in subsidy status at municipality-age-time level. We find that free care for children significantly increases spending on outpatient care by 22–31%, with the arc-elasticity of –0.1 for all ages 7–14, which is smaller than the conventional estimate for adults. Interestingly, we find little evidence of asymmetric responses to the price changes of the opposite directions, implying that policy makers can reasonably employ existing elasticity estimates, regardless of the direction of the price changes. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that that increases mostly reflect low-value or costly care. Increases in outpatient visits do not translate to reduction in hospitalization by “avoidable” conditions nor reduction in mortality. Furthermore, we document that inappropriate use of antibiotics and costly off-hour visits increase. Taken together, we conclude that the benefit of such generous subsidy is limited at least in the short-run.

This paper investigates the long-term effects of exposure to armed conflict on trust, trustworthiness, and real-life pro-social behaviors by using trust measures elicited from incentivized lab-in-the-field experiments in rural northern Uganda. Overall, unlike prior studies, we do not find that trust is fostered by exposure to armed conflict either at the individual-level (whether one was abducted by a rebel group) or household-level (whether it was displaced to a camp). However, there is a heterogeneous impact among former abductees: those who were abducted when younger exhibit less trust and trustworthiness. Furthermore, those abducted seem to show higher mistrust when playing with partners in the northern region compared with other regions. In the effect on real life behavior, those abducted during conflict are more likely to engage in pro-social behaviors. To understand the seemingly contradicting findings between experimentally elicited trust and real life behavior, we investigate the mechanism, which reveals that assistance received after the conflict and the experience of holding a leadership position while with the rebels are the main channels of fostering pro-social behavior.

Randomised experiments ensure equal opportunities but could generate unequal outcomes by treatment status, which can be socially costly. This study demonstrates a sequential intervention to conduct rigorous impact evaluation and subsequently to mitigate ‘experiment-driven’ inequality. Specifically, control farmers were initially restricted from exchanging information with treated farmers, who received rice management training, to satisfy the stable unit treatment value assumption. We then encouraged information exchange between the two groups of farmers one year after the training. We found positive training effects, but initial performance gaps created by our randomised assignment disappeared over time because of information spillovers and, hence, eventually control farmers also benefitted from our experiment.

13.00-13.50 Yuki Higuchi (Nagoya City University)
“Incentives, Self-selection, and Social Norms in the Labor Contract: A
Two-stage Field Experiment in the Philippines” (joint with Jun Goto)

This paper decomposes productivity difference between fi xed wage (FW) contract and individual piece rate (IPR) contract into self-selection and incentive effects, using unique two-stage fi eld experiment. We offered an option of switching to IPR contract for agricultural workers in the Philippines, whose default option has traditionally been FW contract, and we converted random half of those who opted for IPR contract back to the original FW contract. By comparing three groups, i.e., those who chose and worked under IPR contract, those who chose IPR but worked under FW contract, and those who chose and worked under FW contract, we find that the self-selection effect accounts for 60% of the productivity difference between the two types of contract. By combining with the data collected from lab-in-the-field experiment, we find that the choice of IPR contract is associated with social norm parameters, namely, inequity aversion and kinship tax rate. Exploiting our random group assignment, we also find that the influence of social norm is particularly strong when the workers have high probability of repeated interaction with other group members, suggesting the presence of a community enforcement mechanism in agrarian villages.

14.00-14.50 Rohini Pande (Rafik Hariri Professor of International
Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School)
“State Capacity, State Accountability, and Poverty”

日時

Special TWID on Evidence-based Policy Making In cooperation with JICA and PARI

*Registration is Required

June 21 2018 (Thursday)14:00-17:10※日時・場所に注意

場所

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）2階 小島コンファレンスルーム
in Kojima Conference Room on the 2nd floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

14:00-14:40Chikako Yamauchi (The National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS))
"The impact of access to health facilities on maternal care use, travel patterns and health status: Evidence from longitudinal data from Uganda" (joint with Fredrick Manang)

This paper investigates whether newly established health facilities affect maternal health care use, maternal/child health and travel patterns to facilities. In order to deal with possibly endogenous facility placement, we apply two strategies to the new, decade-long panel data from Uganda: the community-level and mother-level fixed effects models. Several robustness checks support the validity of our results. We find that large facilities and small clinics play differential roles. While openings of large facilities increase the probability of delivery at formal facilities, new clinics increase regular antenatal care usage. The openings of both types of facilities are accompanied by an increased use of less expensive yet more time-consuming transportation modes such as walking, leaving the time to facilities unchanged but reducing the monetary costs of care use. Our heterogeneity analysis further indicates the effects are driven by sub-counties which did not initially have those facilities. The impact of a large facility is also strong in sub-counties which initially had clinics. These results imply the importance of universal coverage of health facilities which ensures each locality to have at least one facility suitable for its population size.

Conventional wisdom says that psychological factors play an important role in the low vaccine take-up in African countries, without rigorous evidence. This paper examines the causal effect of psychic costs of vaccination on its take-up. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in rural Nigeria among women of childbearing age with no experience of tetanus vaccination. Women in the control group were asked to answer a short survey at their house, while women in the treatment group were asked to receive a tetanus vaccine at their house in addition to answering the short survey. The difference in the completion rates of the short survey and vaccination among the treated and the short survey among the controlled captures psychic costs of vaccination. We find that psychic costs of vaccination decrease the vaccine take-up by 12.7 percentage points. We distinguish two types of women with psychic costs of vaccination: passive refusers with zero willingness to pay for the vaccine and active refusers with negative willingness to pay. We find that women with psychic costs are divided almost equally between passive and active refusers.

15:20-16:00 Mai Seki (JICA Research Institute)
"Individualized Self-learning Program to Improve Primary Education: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in Bangladesh" (Joint with Yasuyuki Sawada, Minhaj Mahmud, An Le, and Hikaru Kawarazaki)

This paper investigates the effectiveness of a globally popular individualized self-learning method in improving the cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of disadvantaged pupils in Bangladesh. Using a randomized control trial design, we study the impact of this method among third and fourth graders studying at non-formal primary schools. The results show that students of both grades in the treatment schools record substantial improvement in their cognitive abilities, after a period of 8 months, compared to students in the control schools. In terms of non-cognitive abilities, we find significant impact on self-confidence of the pupils. These findings are consistent with a longer-term impact found in terms of national level Primary School Certificate exam take-up rates and the exam grades. Moreover, we find a positive impact on the ability of teachers' to assess their students' performance. The predicted benefit-cost ratio exceeds one when the effect continues for more than three to ten years. Overall, these results suggest the wider applicability of a properly designed non-formal education program in solving the learning crisis observed in developing countries.

* This is a preliminary draft. Please do not cite or distribute without permission of the authors.

Abstract

Coastal Erosion is a major issue in many areas of the world. In addition to being present over many coastal areas, erosion is a complex problem in terms of its causes, consequences, and potential coping strategies. Coping strategies and averting behaviour crucially depend on the expected value for individuals, which is affected by monetary gains and losses and by the perceived probability of occurrence of an erosion problem, that is the individual risk perception, which is the main focus of this paper. Perception of risk depends, among others, on variables specific to the type of risk, to the individual, and to the individual´s familiarity and experience with the source of risk. This paper proposes to analyse the risk of coastal erosion perceived by different types of individuals with respect to their relation with the area under study. It further investigates the determinants of risk perception with a special focus on familiarity with risk and risk attitudes.